Franz Liszt completed his Piano Sonata in B minor at Weimar in 1853. It met with a mixed reception from the musical establishment of the day but is now a part of the repertoire of every leading pianist and may even be the most frequently recorded and performed piano work ever written. It is the outstanding example of the compositional process of thematic transformation. The grandeur and lyrical power of its themes, based on three motifs so clearly stated at the outset, place it at the pinnacle of the piano literature.

Performances by the composer and his pupils are chronicled in "Franz Liszt's Piano
Sonata", and the Sonata's editions and interpretative traditions are discussed by the
author who also offers his own analysis of the Sonata's enigmatic and chameleonlike
structure which has fascinated musicologists for 150 years.

This book comes with a compact disc containing the historic 1913 piano roll recording
of the Sonata by celebrated Liszt pupil Eugen d'Albert and the 1916 piano roll
recording by another celebrated pianist of the time, Ernest Schelling.

Gerard Carter is the author of several books on the Liszt Sonata and has produced CDs of historic recordings as well as of his own performance. Gerard studied the Sonata with Eunice Gardiner when he was a pupil at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Miss Gardiner had taken lessons from Claudio Arrau, which makes Gerard a great- great- grand pupil of Franz Liszt. Gerard holds the associate diploma in music (piano performing) and is a graduate in economics and law from the University of Sydney.